The things we let tear us apart

I bumped into a friend the other day, and over the course of the conversation, we got to talking about intermarriage. She explained how her views had changed over time, as she had encountered more and more families dealing with this challenge of living, as we do, in an open society. She comes from a family that sent all the kids to day school, to Jewish camps, attended shul nearly every shabbat and holiday. Still, she realized this was no guarantee. And so, she told me, she had learned to approach the question with more of an open mind. An open heart. She still very much wanted her kids and grandkids to make a Jewish home with a Jewish partner, and she’d tell them that every chance she got. But she also wasn’t going to risk losing them if they made a decision she disagreed with. 

This isn’t a surprising story. I’ve heard some version of it from Jews of every denomination, even from Haredim. Where previous generations might have considered sitting shiva for a child who intermarried, today most see their primary concern as preserving the relationship, even when that child is making wildly different life choices. Because we love our children, no matter what path they choose, no matter if they decide to convert to Catholicism, use different pronouns, even if they (gulp!) drop out of college. No matter how far they stray, how fully they reject the values that we have taught them, we will still accept them.

Well, unless they supported Mamdani. 

What? You thought this was going to be about intermarriage? 

No. Intermarriage was going to take at least a few generations to do its full damage. Seems the American Jewish community was looking for something a whole lot faster. And more efficient. The vitriol over the last few weeks and the absolute despair and anger since the election in New York City was called  – it’s been shocking. Just in the last 18 hours, I’ve seen Jews declaring that this is the end of New York City as we know it, that every single Jew in New York is in imminent danger, that the Jews should immediately move to Florida – where there have been neo-nazi protests outside of Disney World, where parades of boats of Trump supporters proudly waved swastika flags – rather than spend one more second in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world. 

I’ve seen old friends post on social media that any Mamdani supporters should immediately unfollow them. They post pictures of the Statue of Liberty extinguishing her torch, or in a burka, or leaving New York. They post Islamophobic content that takes my breath away. Their children, I imagine, are watching.

And I’ve seen Israel’s diaspora minister, Amichai Chikli, who seems to think his main job is to denigrate every Jew who lives outside of Israel, announce that New York is “marching eyes wide open into the abyss,” and urging its Jewish inhabitants to consider immediately making aliyah. 

The thing is, about a third of New York City’s Jews voted for Mamdani. And among younger New Yorkers, the numbers are surely higher. Are you ready to sit shiva for all of them? To declare that they are no longer fit to be a part of the Jewish people? If, as Chikli himself asserts, the nucleus of Jew hatred in New York is the now defunct campus protests, why is it davka the young Jews who are supporting him? Have they all been brainwashed? Are they all, as Trump called Jewish Mamdani voters, stupid? 

Or, is it possible that Jews can profoundly disagree about what the future of the city should look like, and still, they could all find their place among Am Yisrael?

Both right and left are indeed guilty of rhetoric that makes it harder to have a civil dialogue, for sure. Everyone could stand a good dose of humility, no matter their level of certitude in their own righteousness. We, none of us, no matter how learned, can be sure we know what God wants of us. No single person has been awarded the task of sorting out who is a worthy Jew and who is not. Until then, all we can do is live our lives according to our best guesses. And figuring that out is difficult enough. Those on the right who claim they have the power to decide who is a real Jew based on politics, they are playing a perilous game.

In this atmosphere of anger and fear, it’s really hard to see the humanity in people who make choices that we think are wrong, or even dangerous. When it’s our own children who are looking us in the eyes, maybe we need to tell them if we think they’re wrong, and then hug them, and kiss their foreheads and tell them we love them. If they are created in the image of the divine, who are we to judge?